Having dinner with NPD father - how foolish is that?

[Gaining Strength]

Yesterday afternoon I took my little boy in for a hair cut in the village.  Afterward we went across the street to a local bookstore/cafe where a small group of men often get together to visit, expecting to see my father there.  (Why did I go you might well ask?)  He was and seemed glad to see my son asking him for a hug. 

As I was entering the shop one of the regulars was leaving and another was standing near the regular table where my father was sitting alone.  I suspect he has interrupted their routine gathering that has lasted for several years.  He has only shown up in recent months.  It is sad to see - he used to have many friends and was well liked and had a position of leadership in the community.  But there is not mistaking anymore that there is something terrribly wrong with him.

What struck me most yesterday was that he has absolutely no understanding and no interest in how other people feel about anyone else.  Specifically, it never occurs to him that two people he knows may dislike each other or that someone may prefer to avoid someone who has been rude to them or betrayed them.  Obviously this has clear narcissitic traits but it cerrtainly clarifies why he had no interest nor ability to help me figure out how to live and work in the world - he hadn't a clue - he had siimply been born into a family with enough status and money that he could get by until the disfunction grew like a tumor right out of his normal body size now visible for anyone to see and RUN!!!

OCD and NPD - that's who I learned from about developing relationships.  Gee, I wonder why I eventually ended up isolated.

So WHY am I having dinner with him????  How about why in the world did I go into that shop looking for him to say hello?  That's the real question I should try to answer.  In part, because he had called my mother Sunday afternoon looking for me to have dinner with him and some of his cousins.  He has asked me over 20 times in the past three years and each time I hav said no, always explaining that Sunday is family time with my little boy (as it always was for our family).  This is the first time I have known that he has tried to contact me for 6 or more months and my ignorant side felt a little sorry for him.

Part of his outrageous behavior is that he does not have a phone so that no one can call him and he will not leave a message but none-the-less he rages to people that his children do not keep in touch with him.  Some one I know casually told me recently that he told them that I hadn't bothered to call him in months.  He neglected to mention that he didn't have a phone and that he had not called and left a message to let me know that he was trying to get in touch. 

So even though I have known that I needed to stay away, when he asked us for dinner I said yes, ridiculously feeling bound to - fearing the responce if I said no.  I suspect that ultimately I fear that he will cut me out of his will and I am financially desparate.  But I know all to well that nothing I do or don't do can have any thing to do with what his choices are.  He feels no obligation to me or my child nor to my brothers.  it's interesting in light of the fact that had his parents not left him huge sums of money he would be out on the street by now.  But once again - isn't that right out of the NPD text book description.

It's too bad I slipped here.  I have been doing better and better.  Today and yesterday I have begun to get so me strength.  To set small goals and achieve them and best of all find mental exercises to help me stay out of anxiety and encouraged.  I won't let this evening get me  - but I am disappointed in myself.

Gaining Strength

[pennyplant]

Well, GS, at least you can come back here and tell us what you learn from having this dinner with your father.
Good luck, GS.

Pennyplant

[Plucky]

Hello GS,
If you are going to take this one instance of trying to be responsive to someone and make a stab at trying to relate normally to a sick person, and use it to berate yourself and belittle your own progress, just stop it right there.

You have make enormous leaps since first coming up here, and it may be too soon to test anything out by seeing your father, but it may just be ok.  You may have the skills to distance and deal with him now.  Worst case scenario is that it sets you back somewhat, but that is something you can overcome and live to learn from it.

I still maintain contact with my N mother, because I learn something from her each time - some new memory or dynamic I hadn't noticed, some mew facet of my own behaviour that springs directly from her and I'll need to weed it out.  I would feel guilty to cut her off and not look after her in some fashion.  I also think that in tiny doses, it is good for my children to see her behaviour and my responses.    They know they have family, even if it is a dysfunctional person, and they also know there are ways to deal with these people without becoming engulfed.

So go ahead and have dinner, and put that whipping stick away.  Bon appetit!
 
a stern
Plucky

[Gaining Strength]

Well, GS, at least you can come back here and tell us what you learn from having this dinner with your father.

Thanks Pennyplant - I survived and so did my child.  But boy was he mad that we had to go.  I felt so bad about it that we stopped and bought a dimestore toy on the way and that was the smartest thing I did.  As I expected, my father was quite late.  We already had our food and were playing with the new toy when he arrived.  It was not nearly as bad as usual - thank heavens.  Before we left he gave me an envelope and asked me to check over the contents to see what was there but to wait to read them later.  He had a letter to me dated Feb. 2006, a page of information about his funeral preferences and another page of notes about a recent conversation with a minister long retired from his church about his funeral. I asked if he was planning to die soon and he said "yes, I expect before the year's end."  I'm not yet sure if he means 2006 or 12 months from now.

My 5 year old and I talked briefly about that on our way home and decided that we could make a periodic effort to be kind to him since he is quite lonely and alone for the first time in his life and because he hasn't long to live.  It really makes me sad - not in the way of losing a loving father but in the great loss of what could have been a good life.  He was bright, accomplished, had the makings of good leadership potential, had a lot of friends and a good personality early on.  He was quite athletic, a skilled tennis player among other things. He was a decorated war veteran.  He won two silver stars in a terrible situation in North Korea. He never once mentioned it to us - I found that metals and the articles in the attic when I was a child.  He is a Princeton grad and Harvard Businiess School.  What a shame that his wretched parents had no nurturing capacities, no love to shower on their children, who in turn had no clue how to love.  I really breaks my heart. But there it is.  It's not a Groundhog Day or It's a Wonderful Life story where you get to go back and do it again but the right way this time around - I wish he could - I wish I could. It just doesn't work that way.

I still maintain contact with my N mother, because I learn something from her each time - some new memory or dynamic I hadn't noticed, some mew facet of my own behaviour that springs directly from her and I'll need to weed it out.  I would feel guilty to cut her off and not look after her in some fashion.  I also think that in tiny doses, it is good for my children to see her behaviour and my responses.    They know they have family, even if it is a dysfunctional person, and they also know there are ways to deal with these people without becoming engulfed.

Plucky - what wise words.  I had those very thoughts in mind before I went. It does help to get every little insight into my experience as a child in this N world.

Thanks pennyplant and Plucky for your insights and encouragements.  I am definitely doing much better than before.
Gaining Strength

[Stormchild]

GS - is it possible that you went looking for him because you had somehow 'sensed' that he might not be around much longer? I've learned from years of such things to trust that kind of premonition when I have it... if I get a sudden urge to call someone I do it... because it almost always turns out to be something like this.

Sounds to me as though you did everything as well as you possibly could have done, and then some. You ARE definitely doing tremendously much better!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hopalong]

Bravo EVERYONE.
What a wonderful thread...tells me so much about the healing and growth this board facilitates.

I'm so glad you did it, GS.
Keep your boundaries up and keep taking care of yourself...but know you have grown much stronger, in more ways than one.

You're past rigid defense now (it's possible in your case)...and you're reaping something good, imo.

Hops

[pennyplant]

I'm so relieved for you that it went as well as it did.  Your son will learn something very fine from how you are handling this.  He seems like such a fine little boy himself already, though.

Your father's story really is a such a sad one.  It's possible that his experience in Korea was a major turning point in his development.  He was a hero but that may have come at a price.  My uncle fought in Korea.  He died in 1972 when he was hit by a car while walking home drunk.  We have always felt that even though the accident was nearly 20 years later, it was Korea that really killed him.  The things that he saw and the injuries he received ensured that he would be forever a changed man.

Please keep us posted as things go along.

Love, Pennyplant

[gratitude28]

GS,
Honestly, I never will go no contact. I can't do it and I don't want to. However, I have a few oceans between us and that manages everything to the degree I need. I am OK with them at this distance.
Do you want to go no contact? Are you really regretting your decision? What do you think will happen?
Hugs,
Beth

[Gaining Strength]

Gratitude

I don't want to go no contact - though reason tells me about the limits of possibility my heart still wishes he could "snap" out of it.  This tells me that I am still hooked in on some level.  Of course there is sorrow and sadness that the man who is my father can not ever be a father of care and nurture.  After all this time I am still astonished that this human can not recognize and consider anyone else's feelings or emotions.  It is so very strange.

Pennyplant

I know that Korea had a terribly debilitating effect on him.  I suspect that the early life experiences were devastating and that Korea simply cemented and exacerbated the devastation.

Hopalong

Definitely will focus on boundaries.  His letter about his preferences for his funeral and obituary are deeply saddening for reasons other than the obvious and they definitely push on that anxiety center for me which is also burdened by a very gloomy, cold rainy day among a few other struggles.  All the more need for focus on boundaries - the lack thereof is the true source of my tumorous anxiety.

Stormchild

I really went into that shop to say hello because he had called my mother asking to have dinner with me.  It come out of guilt and great sadness that he is not a person with whom I can have a loving and caring relationship.  Raising a child whose father died when our son was 7 months old, juxtaposed against being raised by an OCD/NPD father who can't support and encourage leaves me exceptionally aware of the need and longing of what a beneficial father figure can add and I have great sorrow about that.

Thanks everyone - Gaining Strength

[Gaining Strength]

My mother and I are having a small halloween party tomorrow afternoon.  It was her suggestion in late August.  Little did I know that I would be in an anxiety swit for weeks in the interim.  But as we have been getting ready I got new insights into where some of my anxiety originates.

She gets really uptight about very simple things, "Oh what a disaster!" she screams from the kitchen as she drops a spoon into the dishwasher. She then adds in a pinch of negativity, "That's too much - you can't get all that done." or "No, I don't want to fool with that!" when I've suggested that we add open faced grilled cheese sandwiches to the menu of hot soup.

Between my mother and my precious hyper, hyper active 5 year old no wonder I'm bats.  Not to mention those terribly critical and discouraging voices I picked up from my NPD father. 

I was proud of myself this afternoon as I talked back to those voices and worked on replacing them.

My son is singing with the little cherubs at church tomorrow and I need to hem his choir robe.  This afternoon, my mother, who I have told about my anxiety, said that she was very anxious about the choir robe being hemmed on time.  In a flash I saw for the first time that my entire life she projected her anxiety onto me about things under my responsibility and in addition to the anxiety she projected a negativity about it ever getting done at all.  Ta Da!!!! Now I see it - this process is very clearly a huge source of my paralysis.  Hops if you are reading this - you are my spirit who helps me chop down the paralysis barrier.  I may have knocked a large boulder down today.

Thanks for listening. - Gaining Strength

[Hopalong]

GS, WOW. Wow WOW!

These are lightning bolts, all right!

God, it's exciting. Just so thrilling when you feel the penny drop and the ground moves.

I am so excited for you! You have connected the dots!
Now the unraveling will go faster than ever before because it all makes sense.

You're not crazy and never have been. Just a very excellent learner.

And now you can actually unlearn, reprogram, restore, reclaim.

Yay, YOU! (And thank you for your kind words. You help me feel useful!)

((((((((((((())(((GS, unparalysed))))))))))))))))))))))

(Today I found myself calmly doing paperwork. I think a lot of it is because I am close to finsihed with the daily torture of the grant editing. I feel freedom coming on and all of a sudden it didn't hurt or scare me to look at the pile. I just looked at it. Picked something up. Did something with it. Amazing.)

Hops